Mr. Chairman, we recognize that different people will undoubtedly interpret the information we developed in different ways. Some will be persuaded, as we were, that the existence of a widespread conspiracy was unlikely. Others will probably find cause to strengthen their belief that deliberate obstruction did occur. Thus, the publicity, interest, and controversy about INS' lack of progress may continue.

The controvesy may be further compounded because legal delays, appeals, and other procedures, considered with the age of the individual and potential witnesses make it doubtful that the Government will ever be able to deport many subjects of the allegations. This concludes my prepared statement. A copy of our report is attached to the statement. We would be pleased to respond to any questions you may have regarding the findings in our report.

Mr. EILBERG. Mr. Lowe, we will receive testimony from Mr. DeVito concerning their experiences as INS employees involving alleged Nazi war criminal investigations and proceedings.

The committee has been aware of allegations made by them, and I am sure you are aware of them, especially Mr. DeVito, concerning deliberate delays, missing files, possible bribery and employment by CIA and FBI of certain alleged that the Nazi war criminals.

I presume that each of these allegations was investigated thoroughly by your agency in the course of its inquiry into this matter. Can you tell us what were the results of those inquiries?

Mr. Lowe. Yes. I am not sure that we investigated each and every one of those. These cases we selected were investigated as far as we could go. If I am not mistaken, Mr. DeVito and Mr. Schiano were both interviewed.

Mr. TIPTON. They were.

Mr. LowE. Maybe you would like to comment further.

Mr. EILBERG. Mr. Tipton?

Mr. TIPTON. Yes. Both Mr. DeVito and Mr. Schiano did give us certain allegations they had made. During the course of our investigation we did try to substantiate if the allegations were true. Also, with regard to Mr. DeVito we didn't find anything in our review that would substantiate it.

Also during our review, with regard to Mr. DeVito's allegations, we found they were both investigated by INS internal investigation unit, and the FBI, and they could not substantiate it either.

Mr. STANTON. The allegation regarding other agencies having used some of these alleged Nazis was true, and that is in the report.

Mr. EILBERG. I didn't understand that, Mr. Stanton.

Mr. STANTON. The allegation about other agencies having used some of these people for information sources and so forth was true. We did get evidence of that from the agencies.

Mr. EILBERG. Mr. Tipton-

Mr. STANTON. The matter about deliberate obstruction we could not verify.

Mr. TIPTON. Or missing files.

Mr. EILBERG. Did you, in your opinion, thoroughly go over the complaints offered by Mr. DeVito and Mr. Schiano?

Mr. TIPTON. Yes, we did.

Mr. EILBERG. And did you check them out as thoroughly as you could?

Mr. TIPTON. As thoroughly as we could. We could not check all of them out; we just checked them out with regard to the cases in question.

Mr. EILBERG. What limitations did you find in the ability to check out their complaints?

Mr. TIPTON. We found no limitations.

Mr. EILBERG. You said you went as far as you could, and I don't understand what you mean by as far as you could.

Mr. TIPTON. With regard to the cases in question that had the allegation, we reviewed that file, we did take a look to see if we could substantiate their allegations.

Mr. EILBERG. Mr. DeVito charged that there were files stolen in the transfer, and he refers to missing memos involving alleged Nazi war criminals.

Did you look into those charges or complaints?

Mr. TIPTON. If they were in those cases we reviewed, yes.

Mr. STANTON. In the cases Mr. DeVito was referring to, we did examine the cases, but the INS, the way they keep the files, you could not tell what was supposed to be in the files. But where we were able to determine memos from one agency to another, or that someone prepared a memo, we tried to trace it down, and in most cases we were able to locate them.

Mr. EILBERG. So that you do not rule out the possibility that what Mr. DeVito says may, in fact, be true?

Mr. STANTON. No, sir, we cannot rule it out. We just cannot tell. There is no control over the files, no numbering system. They were pretty much in disarray. You could not tell what should have been in there, so you would not know if something were missing.

Mr. EILBERG. What about the charges by Mr. DeVito of association between certain Nazi war criminals and the FBI and CIA? Did you look into those and what did you find?

Mr. STANTON. They were true, yes, sir. There was the association both with the CIA and with the FBI.

Mr. EILBERG. Would you go into more detail in answer to the question? True to what extent or in what way?

Mr. STANTON. Of the 111 people, names we selected to review, the CIA said that it had been in contact with 22 of the persons on our list. One of those decided not to become involved. The other 21 apparently provided some services to the CIA, 7 of these people were paid for the information provided, and the FBI had information on 47 of the 111 and it told us it had a confidential relationship with 2 of them.

The extent of the involvement we don't know. We did not get into the cases, so we could tell how they were used, what information they provided, how much they were paid.

Mr. EILBERG. Mr. DeVito also refers to payoffs and bribery involved in another Romanian war criminal case. Did you look into that?

Mr. TIPTON. We found no evidence of any payoffs.

Mr. STANTON. We asked those questions of many people involved and just found no evidence.

Mr. EILBERG. You mentioned in your report you looked at 111 cases. How did you select those particular cases to be reviewed? Mr. STANTON. We looked at all of the names the INS had on file at the time we started the review. This was in February of 1977. And they had the names in various categories like "under investigation," "investigation closed," "person cannot be located," "deceased," and we just selected at random, just picked names from each of the categories. Then at the hearings we had before you last August, Congresswoman Holtzman requested we expand our sample to include all cases on which allegations were made prior to 1973, which we did.

So that the final total was 111. The appendix 3 of our report shows how the categories of the names were selected.

Mr. Lowe. Mr. Chairman, at the time we testified last August, if I remember correctly, we had 75 cases we had selected, and after Ms. Holtzman asked us to go back and get the cases that had arisen before 1973, I believe that added 36 cases to our total, giving us 111.

Mr. EILBERG. That included cases before 1973 as well as subsequent to 1973?

Mr. LowE. Yes, sir. All cases before 1973, and a number of them afterwards.

Mr. EILBERG. But totaling 111?

Mr. STANTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. EILBERG. What part, if any, did INS play in the selection of those cases?

Mr. Lowe. None, except furnishing the list of names.

Mr. EILBERG. How do you know that you had an adequate selection of cases in selecting that number?

Mr. STANTON. It was not a statistical sample.

Mr. EILBERG. Meaning?

Mr. STANTON. We do not know if we had all names prior to 1973. These were the ones they had on their list. There could have been cases opened and closed prior to 1973 which we did not know about. Mr. EILBERG. All right.

The Chair will yield at this moment, but I would just like to advise the members we are in a 5-minute rule after we get through our quorum this morning, and I will seek to have unanimous consent that we may meet notwithstanding we are in the 5-minute rule.

If we are unsuccessful in that, it's my suggestion that we simply wait until we get into general debate on the next matter on the floor, and we will try to alert you as quickly as we can that we are ready to proceed.

I would ask, as chairman, I suggest we try to stick to the five minute rule so everyone has an adequate opportunity.

Ms. Holtzman?

Ms. HOLTZMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

In appendix 3 you provide a breakdown of the cases reviewed in your investigation.

I note that although you reviewed all 54 cases on which allegations were received after 1973, you did not review 17 of the 57 pre1973 cases, about 30 percent.

I notice you referred to the prior colloquy we had in which I indicated to you that I thought in terms of determining why the Government did not act on the Nazi war criminal cases it would be most useful to look at the cases received during the period of inaction and not afterwards.

I am very concerned, therefore, about this breakdown and the failure by the GAO to review 30 percent of the pre-1973 cases. The reason given for the failure to review this number was, and I quote, "Time constraints," stated in appendix 3.

It seems to me that if you found yourself pressed for time that you should have concentrated your efforts on the pre-1973 cases, and not on the post-1973 cases which is what you did. And of particular importance in this regard is your statement on page 54 that of the 17 cases you did not look at, 4 involved individuals who are now under litigation because of new evidence found after 1973. It would seem to me that there would be precisely the cases that the GAO would want to look at, cases in which the Immigration Service was unable or failed or refused to find evidence for 20-some odd years, and then was able to find evidence to bring a case. Those are exactly the cases that I thought the GAO would want to look at and to explain to this committee why the Immigration Service originally failed to act and why it found evidence after 1973.

Can you explain to the subcommittee why, despite the colloquy we had last August and despite my letter, you did not look at these 17 cases and why you did not look specifically at the 4 cases involving persons against whom charges were subsequently brought.

Mr. Lowe. If I am not mistaken, Ms. Holtzman, I think there are very similar cases we did look at where they were open investigations and subsequently came up with some kind of action. I doubt seriously these would be any different from those.

MS. HOLTZMAN. Mr. Lowe, we asked you to look at the cases because we wanted to know what happened. And what you are giving us is a statistical response. But you still come up with a flat statement, "There is no evidence of a widespread conspiracy."

How can you make a statement that there is no evidence of a widespread conspiracy when you are using a statistical procedure with respect to the pre-1973 cases?

I am very concerned about that, and I am also concerned about the fact that a flat statement is made that no evidence exists when, in fact, you did not have access to the raw investigative files of either the CIA or the FBI. I don't understand how you can come up with such a conclusion.

That is not to say that the conclusion may not be accurate, but I don't understand how you can, in all honesty, come up with such a conclusion without having studied all the evidence.

Mr. Lowe. I think, if I am not mistaken, we said we didn't find any; we didn't say there wasn't any.

Ms. HOLTZMAN. No. I am going to read to you from your own digest on the first page of your report: "While the GAO concludes that no widespread conspiracy existed, it cannot absolutely rule out the possibility of undetected, isolated instances of deliberate obstruction."

I don't understand how you can possibly reach a conclusion when you have not looked at 17 cases, close to 30 percent of the pre-1973

cases.

Mr. STANTON. I want to point out we did look at all of these cases. We did not go through every document in these 17. They were large cases, some of them were out of the area. It would have been more difficult and it would have taken time. Of the 17 we did query the FBI, CIA and other agencies and we did get some information, enough to give the indication they were not too different than the other cases we were looking at.

We just had to make a decision to go another 3 months, to look at these cases or close it out, and we didn't think it would warrant going ahead and doing the extra work. This is not a statistical sample, it would have been a 100 percent review of cases prior to 1973. So we did look, as I said, at two-thirds of those cases in detail. Ms. HOLTZMAN. Well, I would just simply say I thought we had reached an agreement last time you were here that you would concentrate your efforts on the pre-1973 cases, and yet you made a decision to do all of the post-1973 cases and eliminate or leave out 30 percent of the pre-1973 cases. I think that decision on your part was contrary to what I thought the understanding with this subcommittee was, which was that you would concentrate on the pre1973 cases.

Mr. STANTON. We did.

Ms. HOLTZMAN. If there was a question of time, that you would leave out the post-1973 cases?

Mr. STANTON. For the cases after 1973 we had already gotten most of the information before the August hearings, before you told us that, and we had pretty much completed those. It was just a matter of going back and seeing the third agency documents on them, and they were easy to complete, and that is why we did complete them.

The cases we are talking about here were added after the hearings and we had to start from scratch on them.

Mr. Lowe. There is one other factor I think which we must mention, Ms. Holtzman; the subcommittee was urging us to get this report issued. We could have dragged it out 2 or 3 more months, and done all of those cases, but I think the subcommittee wanted this report.

Mr. EILBERG. Mr. Lowe, it took you 14 months to do what you did.

Mr. Lowe. It took us 8 months to get in the front door of some of these agencies, even with your help.

Mr. EILBERG. In 14 months, it's obvious we expected more than we got.

Go ahead; do you have anything else?

Ms. HOLTZMAN. Yes. I again would like an explanation of how you can make a flat statement that there was no widespread conspiracy when, in fact, you did not have access to the raw files of the CIA and the FBI, and when, you did not review all of the files of the pre-1973 cases.

Mr. LowE. There were 252 cases. We only selected 111, so if we had reviewed 111 you could still ask that same question. I don't know what the answer is. That in the beginning we thought that